“The entire narrative of this country argues against the truth of who you are.”

The turn-out for August’s Books on Tap at Champion Brewery for Ta-Nehisi Coate’s Between the World and Mewas extremely light, so this month’s follow-up post will be short. Coates, inspired by James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, structures the book as a letter to his teenaged son. Using examples from his own adolescence in 1980s Baltimore, his time at Howard University in the late 1990s, and later as a father, Coates explained how racism in America has attempted to constrict both his mind and his physical body. While Coates is pleased that his son enjoys more physical safety in his day-to-day life than Coates did as a child, he warns against falling in love with the American Dream, which was built on the backs of his forebears and the continuation of which necessitates the construct of race to validate racism. Both intimate and encompassing, Between the World and Me has been lauded as required reading for all Americans.